Likelihood of Success

Ron Coleman’s pretty good blog

Social notworking

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 3, 2009

I liked this Business Week article about certain social networking myths, sent to me by Ben Rothke (my computer security maven friend whom I also linked to last week on the other blog).  Two passages deserve to be excerpted.  The first one is about the gigantic baloney factor out and about there right now:

A surfeit of whiz kids and more experienced marketers are claiming to be social media experts and even social media gurus. Search the bios of Robert Scoble’s 56,838 Twitter followers using Tweepsearch (www.tweepsearch.com), an index of the bios of Twitter users, and you’ll find:

• 4,273 Internet marketers

• 1,652 social media marketers

• 513 social media consultants

• 272 social media strategists

• 180 social media experts

• 98 social media gurus

• 58 Internet marketing gurus

How many of them have actually created a successful campaign for clients using social media tools? I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find half a dozen with real track records.

I think you’d also be hard-pressed to call at least half of these characters any kind of “kids,” much less whizzes.  “Social media consulting” is about as accurate a term for most of these wizened hustlers really have to sell as “coaching” (another racket we’ll have to talk about one of these days).

Here’s the second excerpt I liked:

Social media is great if you’re already a star, but that doesn’t happen overnight. . . .

Zappos Chief Executive Tony Hsieh, whose company has millions of customers who are evangelists for the great service that built the brand, quickly became a Twitter star, with more than 32,000 followers. When Dell, JetBlue Airways, the Chicago Bulls, and other love-’em-or-hate-’em brands joined Twitter, they immediately developed huge followings.

Tweets can be used to drive traffic to articles, Web sites, contests, videos, and so on—if people already care about your brand, or if you have a truly original idea that people will want to share with their followers.

The focus, really, in the second excerpt should be on the last sentence.  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Social networking, Stragety | 5 Comments »

Reckoning

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 3, 2009

A lot of things are looking different from how they once did, aren’t they?

While experiencing serial delays along New Jersey’s government transit system, I decided to take a long, hard look at the contacts database in my BlackBerry.  Boy, there were a lot of names in there of people regarding whom I have been seriously fooling myself for an embarrassingly long time.

There were people who are never going to pay those invoices.  People who are never going to get back to me about lunch and people I have succeeding in dodging for lunch.  People who are never going to call me to handle a case.  People who were done with me.  There were people who, for the life of me, I cannot remember why, or how, or really even who.

Gone, gone, gone.

The BlackBerry weighs the same now, but the weight of my unrealistic expectations is a lot lighter.

Posted in Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »

Tea for you

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 28, 2009

Instapundit defends those protesting Davids:

RICK MORAN THINKS THE “TEA PARTY” PROTESTS are amateurish and disorganized. . . .  Of course they’re amateurish. Most of these people have never organized a protest before (hence the tendency to do things like forget bullhorns). That’s what you get at the beginning of a movement. But it’s much bigger news when 200 people with jobs who’ve never protested turn out, than when 20,000 of the usual suspects organized by ACORN or ANSWER march with preprinted signs.

Maybe.  I do like Glenn’s point that they’re amateurish because, well, they’re being done by amateurs — and that’s a refreshing distinction from lefty rent-a-crowds.

But I don’t agree with his prediction later in the post that these “tea parties” will swell till they become swell.

Conservatives don’t really do “protest” so good.  It’s not just because, yes, we’re at our fascist jobs or in our suffocating traditional homes being productive and responsible.  It’s that we’re… conservative people.

That’s okay.

UPDATE:  Well, no, I didn’t quite mean it like that (via I/P).  And I wasn’t really so right, in the sense of the word meaning “correct,” necessarily.

I’m still not so sure I’m so wrong, however.

Posted in Americana, Heart and spirit, Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »

The rest of the story

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 28, 2009

Paul Harvey – 1918 – 2009

Posted in Americana | Leave a Comment »

Writing on the wall

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 27, 2009

From the Inside Facebook blog:

“People who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,’” Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, says.

This sounds like an oversimplification to me.  There are more than one level of interaction available to dynamic users of social networking.   Indeed there are many different kinds of social networkers.  The vast majority are relatively passive, as described in the article linked to at the blog, and while they may like to have big networks they mostly hang out with their circle of friends.  But the results of the data discussed in the article are at least presented somewhat misleadingly, it seems:

[I]n a recent interview with The Economist, Cameron Marlow, a research scientist at Facebook, shared some interesting stats on Facebook users’ social behavior patterns.

His findings: while many people have hundreds friends on Facebook, they still only communicate with a small few. Or to quote the author of the article, “Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”

This may in fact be true, but I would certainly want to know the distribution of that trend across users.  I would expect the data to be heavily skewed by the vast number of young to very young people who use Facebook as a toy or a game, which is fine, but which indeed is not at all about networking.

That is not, however, what is getting people interested in Facebook today.  Grownup people, that is.  Are they missing something, because Marlow’s data is an accurate reflection across the board?  Or are we missing something because Marlow’s only giving us a peek of the whole story?  On the other hand, if it’s the latter, what would be his — Facebook’s — motivation for doing so?

Posted in Social networking | 1 Comment »

For want of a nail

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 25, 2009

I blogged at LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® about what Sam Bayard explains masterfully as the

settlement of Jones Day‘s trademark lawsuit against real estate news site BlockShopper.com.  In the lawsuit, Jones Day alleged that BlockShopper infringed and/or diluted its trademark by using the name “Jones Day” to identify two of its associates who purchased homes in Chicago and by using anchor text in hyperlinks from each associate’s name back to their lawyer bios on Jones Day’s own website (here, here).

In my post, in Sam’s post, and in another post I linked to by blogger Ryan Gile, the main question is:  What did Jones Day accomplish?  By virtue of the bad publicity garnered by this lawsuit, as well as what appears to be a friendly rollover by a local federal judge, these associates’ bio pages at the Jones Day website are getting hit more often than could conceivably ever otherwise happen.  The settlement is essentially a face-saver for Jones Day, which must realize that on appeal it would lose the bit of leverage it got in early proceedings due to inexplicable rulings, while having outgunned the financially overwhelmed defendant website that could not afford an appeal anyway.  What was gained, we all ask?

Simple:  That rare commodity of loyalty.

It is not, as Bayard quotes Public Citizen blogger Paul Levy as saying, “in some ways, Jones Day ‘achieved a great deal.’  It sent a message to other websites that “it is not a firm to be trifled with, and that, when Jones Day ‘”asks” you to do something, you had better do it or you are going to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourselves.'”

No.  No major law firm needs to prove that by going through what Jones Day did in this case.  That’s what they’re selling right out of the box.

What Jones Day did was keep an implied promise to its employees, Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Gelt, Lex scripta, Stragety | Leave a Comment »

No quarter

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 24, 2009

Reuters says insurer AIG is “bracing for a fourth-quarter loss of roughly $60 billion …. It would be the biggest loss in a quarter in corporate history.”

Well, I think Reuters means “in history,” not in “corporate history,” seeing as how not even AIG has had a quarter quite that bad before and seeing as how no single person (i.e., non-corporate person) has ever managed to drop quite that much in 90 days.

What a lost journalist opportunity, too.  How often do you get to report on the the worst thing ever in any category — much less in a category everyone can comprehend, like losing money?

But why quibble when we’re in record territory?  The fun thing about being “too big to fail” in the Bush-Obama era is that you have lots of company!  In fact that’s what Uncle Sam has these days, too, as it gobbles up lots and lots of equity in tanking businesses — lots of “company,” get it?

You don’t get it?

You will.

Posted in Gelt | Leave a Comment »

The coronation

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 24, 2009

That’s right:  We’re coronating the hitherto unknown M.A. Lamascoloas as i-knight-theepundit king for this gem sent to Glenn Reynolds in response to Insty’s observation that, gee, whaddya know, Chris Matthews is having his doubts about the Black JFK — about six months too late:

Matthews has himself to blame. I want Obama to succeed. I want our country to succeed. I disagree with 85% of Obama’s positions, but I want him and our country to succeed. He can’t do that if he hasn’t been tested. One of the best tests is a campaign. But he didn’t have one of those, he had a coronation. Matthews and his colleagues across the media let our country down. They gave Obama no vetting whatsoever. Now Matthews wants to complain? It’s a little late for that.

How knavish to say such a thing!  Of royalty you have no share; you are no knight, nor gentleman nor decent commoner.

Off with your head, M.A.!

Posted in Medialites, Narcissus Rex, Past is prologue, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »

Buchanan Ingersoll, Above the Law and the art of contemptible doublespeak

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 23, 2009

The Right Staff is Key

The Right Staff is Key

I have to excerpt almost this entire posting from Above the Law, because you have to read it to believe it.  This might just make a good comment at the blog, but unfortunately the comments section at ATL — which is still, in many respects, a remarkable thing, as David Lat himself will always be — is not a respectable place to be found.  So, check this out.

Back in November, Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney cut 15 to 25 staffers (though the firm declined to call them “layoffs”). Last week, it appears that the firm made additional cuts to its staff — and this time the firm is being clear about what is going on. Buchanan’s executive director Nolan Kurtz told Above the Law:

The firm eliminated about 25 to 30 administrative operations positions last week. Given the overall economic climate, we believe that it’s more important than ever to ensure that we have the right staffing in place firmwide.

The firm also announced the news directly to associates, on Friday. According to a tipster:

[Buchanan Ingersoll] announced Friday another round of cuts after several Harrisburg corp. and Philadelphia IP lawyers resigned…. Kurtz Buchanan told the [attorneys] that laying off staff was not because of the economy but good planning.

Will attorneys soon follow staffers into unemployment? Maybe. . .

Kurtz’s statement to ATL was far more diplomatic than our tipsters’ reports:

[W]e are also in the final stages of our annual attorney review period, which looks at work load, pro bono commitment, skill set and the overall needs of the firm. Much like any other firm or business, we continually review our personnel to ensure we have the best lawyers with the right skills and experience to deliver results for our clients.

We’ll let you know if the guillotine falls on Buchanan attorneys.

Good luck to former Buchanan Ingersoll staff.

No, really.  That is the entire journalistic commentary.  It could very well be that it has reached the point that ATL writers are utterly jaded, hopeless, and frazzled by the whole thing.

But I’m not.

Let’s take official statement number one:

The firm eliminated about 25 to 30 administrative operations positions last week. Given the overall economic climate, we believe that it’s more important than ever to ensure that we have the right staffing in place firmwide.

“The right staffing”?   Let’s get this straight:  In the previous economic climate, did Buchanan Ingersoll believe it needed to ensure that it had the “wrong staffing in place firmwide”?  Or only in certain cities?

Have you ever seen such a cynical, dishonest characterization of layoffs?  It’s not even “right-sizing” — which acknowledges, “We want to be the right size for now.  Last year’s right size is no longer right”  Rather, this is, “The right staffing needs be in place” — as if not only were this a qualitative change — no, a qualitative improvement! — but that the “staffing” of before… in other words, the staff, the people who worked on the staff, who supported their families by being Buchanan Ingersoll staff members — was, now that we can see clearly… WRONG.  It was the WRONG STAFF.  Ing.

Above the Law calls this “being clear about what is going on.”

That’s the first one.  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Americana, Lex scripta, Medialites, Style | Leave a Comment »

Testing my patience

Posted by Ron Coleman on February 23, 2009

Moon over Passaic Memorial Park

This February has been so darned cold that I just don’t know what to do about it.  I am beginning to wonder if all the time I have been talking about how much I enjoy the procession and cycle of the seasons I’ve just been rationalizing?  Because this has been miserable.

Now it was warm enough for a few days, at least, to melt all the ice so I wouldn’t have to feel 30 years older than I am in terror of slipping and falling, which the last couple of years I have been feeling.  Yeah, hitting the hard, frozen ground with a tenth-of-a-ton of force is not nearly as much fun at 45 as it evidently must have been before.  Of course those three or so balmy days in the Northeast were the ones I spent in Florida, visiting my parents — the third day of which was almost entirely spent in the Continental terminal at West Palm Beach on an air travel adventure I ultimately decided I didn’t have the energy to blog about.

I’m glad to be alive and healthy, of course.  And an American.

Posted in Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »

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